The Dalek Who Lived

Harry woke with a start, his hair slick with sweat and his heart beating so hard he thought it might rocket out of his chest and bounce off into the corner of his bedroom. His hand darted out to his bedside table in search of his wand before he realised there was no threat, it had just been a dream.

The Second Wizarding War had taken a lot out of Harry by the time it had reached its brutal conclusion two years ago. His dreams were marred by the image of a laughing, serpentine face. He may have removed the horcrux, but Voldemort was still branded across his thoughts. The nightmares had come thick and fast long before the war had ended, but over the past two years they had always been the same. Voldemort would call him to the forest, he would go, but they would not kill him straight away. He was locked in a cage and made to watch as his friends and loved ones were cut down by killing curses, imperio'd o fight against one another, and set to their knees writhing in pain under the weight of the Cruciatus.

But that night the dream had been different. Hogwarts was not under siege by werewolves and death eaters. The attack had been quite different. Instead of the sickly green glare of Avada Kedavra shooting out across the school, otherworldly beams of white hot light had impacted the shield that the Hogwarts teachers had thrown up, slicing through it like a knife through butter. Anyone the beams touched would die instantly, their skeletons briefly illuminated within their own bodies. It was like a killing curse turned up to eleven, far beyond the limits of even Voldemort's power.

The beams were being fired by creatures that seemed to be of muggle design, they were clearly mechanical. Encased in an armor that glinted golden bronze in the moonlight. A single eye stalk adorned their domed heads, alongside two rectangular lights that lit up every time they spoke. They only ever spoke one word, "exterminate."

In the dream, Harry had not been one of those on the ground trying to fight back against the flying machines, he was in the sky. Flying freer than he ever had before, his vision a blue-tinged telescope that took note of everything below. He rained his biting hot hellfire down on those below with a reckless abandon, feeling only joy at the slaughter of a race that was impossibly inferior.

Harry shook his head, yawned, and tried to push the images out of his head. The dream was just that, a dream. While it may have been horrific to wake up to, it couldn't really mean anything. Voldemort was long since dead, afterall, and the Horcrux had been blasted out of him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, stood, and crossed the landing of the Burrow. He had been in Auror training for the better part of a year, with another two to go. He found it funny that he had to train to be an Auror at all considering his past, though he had to admit the more advanced classes on Stealth and Tracking would have been a help during the war.

Not for the first time Harry cast his mind back to the Battle of Hogwarts. Back to how lucky he had truly been. He wasn't just the Boy-Who-Lived, he was the Boy-Who-Lived Twice now. In those early days some had even dubbed him the Master of Death, but that sort of talk had been quickly dismissed. The only reason he had won at all was because, in truth, Voldemort had just followed his own prophecy to its self-fulfilling end. He had only resisted the killing curse the first time due to the love of his parents, the second because that very act had caused a piece of Voldemort's soul to latch itself onto his. He had seen Dumbledore for the last time that night, and while it may have all been in his head, did that mean the meeting wasn't real? The figment of Dumbledore in his mind suggested as much.

Harry turned from the basin and crept quietly down the stairs, it was still early in the morning and most of the house would still be sleeping. His thoughts drifted to the dreams that had always ruled his life. The dream that Arthurt Weasley was being attacked by a snake was real, sifted straight from the madness of Voldemort's own head, and the knowledge it provided him allowed him to save the man. The dream that he had of Dumbledroe and the fragment of Voldemort's own soul buried inside him had been real on a metaphysical level at the very least. Who was to say that the dream of the metal creatures with their white-hot blasts of light couldn't be real on some level as well?

Of course this is happening in your head Harry, but does that make it any less real?

Dumbledore's words echoed. He stumbled on the stairs, and only just managed to stop himself falling the final few steps by grasping desperately onto the banister. Harry gasped as his chest constricted around his heart in an icy grip of panic, a familiar but long forgotten pain on his forehead flaring up once more. He had always associated that pain with Voldemort, its source the Dark Lords cold rage as it filtered through their latent psychic connection, infesting his own mind with thoughts of hatred and fear. But Voldemort was dead, and this had to be something different. The prickling pain in his scar pulsed rhythmically, spreading out across his face. Thoughts of the pepper pot creatures from his dream danced through his mind, his stomach twisted and turned as if he were going to be sick all over the Weasley's carpet.

He turned and ran back up the stairs, haphazardly scrambling up them two at a time, and all but crashed into the sink basin. His eyes were wild as he searched his face for any sign of madness, a hint that Voldermort or something else was breaking back in. He looked normal, but he could feel it, twisting and turning underneath the skin of his forehead. His breathing short, Harry gently prodded his scar… and there it was. An almost imperceptible bulge, just underneath his flesh, and it was moving. As if it were trying to rip itself free of the young Wizard's skull, out into the world once more.

Harry Potter let out a low, guttural scream as a large stalk pushed itself out of his skin, breaking through his skull with a sickening crack, a bulbous blue screen at the end. The wizard collapsed to his knees and writhed on the floor as the world itself convulsed around him.

xXx

When Harry opened his eyes once again it was with a shock that he realised the world was once again tinted blue, the same blue from his nightmare.

"I do not understand," Harry said, flinching backward as a strange and metallic voice screamed his words in rage. "What… Am… I?"

As he tried to move around further Harry realised that he was chained. He could not move his legs, his arms or his hands. He allowed his head to swivel to the side slightly, just in time to catch a glimpse of what looked like a man in a tweed jacket and a bow tie run past him. The sight of that man, with a carefree smile on his face as he danced through the room, filled him with an icy dread. A primal fear, a hatred so deep that he had never felt anything like it before.

Without his control, as if by instinct alone, he cried out "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

The man glanced back at him, just for a moment, a look of surprise and… perhaps fear… etched across his features. Harry's vision darted downward, unable to meet his sight dead on. His wand arm had been transformed into a stick that reminded him of an egg whisk, his other into something that was almost reminiscent of a muggle toilet plunger. But despite their absurd appearance he could feel a great and lethal power coursing through both. An explosion sounded close by, the force of it shaking the room he was in, causing pieces of the already dilapidated ceiling to collapse. Harry tried to do the one thing he could think of doing in this insane situation, he tried to apparate.

xXx

The Doctor glanced back into the room one last time, eyeing the Dalek that had flinched away from him as he ran past. The others in that sector had barely been operative, husks that were discarded. But this Dalek, with a sparking lightning bolt crack in its casing, seemed suddenly fully active. An explosion shook the building, and he knew that the Daleks in orbit had begun their assault on the Asylum. He didn't have the time to investigate the Dalek that was now avoiding his gaze. It was just another insane Dalek on a planet of insane Daleks. Besides, he had Ponds to rescue. The Doctor turned and ran, just in time to miss the Dalek he had been studying break into an Emergency Temporal Shift. He chains that had been holding it in place fell to the ground, as it vanished into the wilds of time and space.